


the hunter's star

by unraelated



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: AU in which Dimitri and Claude are both women, Academy Era, F/F, Fluff, Genderswap, and aren't uh in a war in February, and have schoolgirl crushes on one another, day of devotion, mentions of background dedue/ashe and hilda/marianne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-19 13:00:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22711201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unraelated/pseuds/unraelated
Summary: Demetria thinks nothing of it when Claude tells her that she'll be waiting for someone at the Goddess Tower on the Day of Devotion.Maybe she should have been paying more attention.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 8
Kudos: 98





	the hunter's star

**Author's Note:**

> I've never actually written this sort of fic before, so please forgive any mistakes! I had a [poll on my twitter](https://twitter.com/unraelated/status/1227715226356920321) about which pairing you guys would like to see and of course, Dimiclaude won by a large margin, to which my friend said "well, it IS femslash February..." so this was born.
> 
> Dimitri is Demetria (the feminine version of his name...), but Claude is still Claude (well, Claudette) because it definitely suits her best, I think.

“It seems a pain,” Sylvain was saying, his arms crossed behind his head as they strode out of the classroom. He kept his nose in the air as they walked together, his mouth twisted into a frown, “that we have to have classes on the Day of Devotion.”

His complaining made Felix frown in turn, and he moved to shove at the redhead, exasperated.

“What would you do if you had it off? Woo some girls? Training is more important.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sylvain laughed on a wave, barely flinching at Felix’s harsh treatment, “I know _you_ think so. But Ingrid and her highness agree with me, don’t you? I bet if we all skipped, they can’t punish us.”

Demetria paused, not really enjoying being dragged into this argument. In truth, she agreed more with Felix, but was hesitant to voice it due to his… hostility toward her of late. She said nothing instead, looking downward with pursed lips.

“Please do not bother her highness with such trivial matters,” Dedue cut in, saving her the problem of trying to respond to either of them. He offered both of the other boys a disapproving look and Demetria found herself walking a little closer to him as thanks.

“Well, _I’m_ skipping,” Sylvain announced, much to Felix’s annoyance. The two of them split off, arguing about the merits of cutting class to chase skirts, and Demetria huffed a sigh, brushing back the fringe of her bangs and looking down toward the ground. Ingrid eventually broke off to, along with Annette and Mercedes, leaving only Dedue at her side as they made their way across the grounds of Garreg Mach.

One more day until the Day of Devotion…

In truth, there was nothing Demetria wanted to do that was particularly special, but the day only served as a reminder that she _had_ no one particularly special to share it with. There was Dedue, of course - platonic in every way, but the two of them were _devoted_ nevertheless. There were the other blue lions, but they struggled to even address her by _name_ , much less look at her as a potential mate. There was -

“Oh hey princess,” Claudette - _Claude_ , she’d insist - greeted as they crossed paths. With Hilda on her heels, the four of them made quite a group and Demetria found her gaze lightening just to see the familiar snarl of rampant brown curls that framed her face and the bright yellow capelet slung over her shoulder, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Demetria opened her mouth for a split second and then closed it again, not knowing quite what to say. Dedue stood silent beside her and Claude grinned, tucking one of the few braids at the side of her face behind her ear.

“Cat got your tongue, Demi? Or, I guess, lion?”

“Please do not refer to her highness so casually,” Dedue asked, but Demetria lifted a placating hand, her gauntlet warm as it touched his wrist.

“It’s alright,” she said, fighting back the flush that rose to her cheeks, “I… I like the nickname, actually.”

Dedue’s lips pursed but he didn’t argue, and eventually inclined his head apologetically. Demetria immediately felt bad for defending Claude in the face of her truest friend and wanted to apologize - or maybe to leave altogether - but Claude’s face lit up like a lantern and she laughed, the sound bright and melodious.

“ _Demi_! Fantastic. I was just wondering where you were heading off to.”

She shook her head once, pulling back from Dedue and lifting her eyes to look toward Claude again.

“Nowhere… well, just the dining hall. We’ve just gotten out of a lecture.”

“I see, I see - us too, actually. The lecture bit, not the dining hall bit.”

Hilda rolled her eyes, leaning in close to Claude with a elongated sigh. “I was just telling Claudie here about how _inhumane_ it is that we have classes tomorrow.”

Demetria blinked, not comprehending for a moment, before recalling the earlier conversation with Sylvain.

“Oh! For the… the Day of Devotion?”

“Yes!” Hilda exclaimed, throwing her hand up and narrowly missing Claude’s shoulder with her dramatic gesture, “I have _suitors_ who all want some of my time, but there’s all these stupid lessons I have to go to!”

Demi tried to look sympathetic, but before she could respond, Claude spoke up.

“Do you have anyone special you’re meeting?”

The question threw her off guard for a moment, and Demetria balked, turning toward Dedue for support, but of course he couldn’t help her there. There was a long pause before she finally looked back toward Claude, feeling the heat rise in her cheeks.

“I… I don’t. We have lessons as well, actually.”

“Ah, well. It’s just as well. I was hoping to meet someone at the Goddess Tower myself, but… I don’t know if they’ll show.”

Demetria blinked. Who could have caught Claude’s eye? The men in her house weren’t exactly what Demi would consider as suitable mates for Claudette - two merchants and a noble who seemingly loathed her - but there were other candidates, she supposed, like someone from the Black Eagle house, or even…

It took her a long moment to realize that Claude was watching her, her head cocked to the side like she was observing something quite interesting from afar, and Demetria flushed again, looking away quickly. Claude was still waiting for a response, and Demi rushed to give her one.

“I struggle to think of any person in this monastery who would stand up someone like you,” she finally said, a hair too quiet, a hair too vulnerable, but it was easier to say when she was looking away, not blinded by Claude’s radiance.

She didn’t have to look at her to hear the laughter that burst from her lips.

“‘Someone like me’?” Claude asked, her voice teasing. Fishing for compliments, perhaps - or, Demi realized too belatedly, inquiring about Demetria’s thoughts on her reputation.

Sure, she knew all about Claude: brilliant, some would say, _sly_ , others would mutter under their breaths. A tactician if you were generous, a snake in the grass if you were rude. Coiled and lying in wait, ready to snap forward and take whatever leverage she could be given.

Demetria longed to be bitten.

“...I just meant,” she tried to clarify, pursing her lips, “that you’re smart and you have a good sense of humor. You act like things don’t bother you, but I think you care - I think you care so much that it makes you a capable leader, even if the others underestimate you.”

Finally, Demetria lifted her head, earnest and frankly, perhaps a tad stupid with how forward she was acting. Hardly befitting of a princess at all. “I don’t.”

Claude hesitated there, disarmed by the sudden admission, the smile frozen onto her face. After a moment in which she presumably mulled over Demi’s exact words, she laughed again - but this one was kinder than the last, softer.

“I hope you’re right, Demi.”

-

Sylvain complained all through the classes. Demetria was admittedly distracted herself, her gaze constantly drifting toward the large windows of the classroom, in the direction that she knew the Goddess Tower to be. She urged herself to focus on the lecture, but her thoughts wandered despite her best intentions, thinking back on the conversation with Claude the previous day.

Was she at the tower right then? Who was she meeting? Demi’s thoughts lingered to all the boys she knew that Claude even remotely interacted with and then sheepishly, wistfully, the girls. Marianne would be a strong choice - Hilda was too, but she seemed too close to Claude. Leonie could be a possibility, she knew that they both liked archery. 

Who else?

The class was dismissed and Demi rose slowly, uninterested in listening to another of Sylvain’s tirades about wasting such an important day. She gathered her things, putting them slowly in her bookbag. Claude had lectures too today, so she couldn’t be at the Tower unless she skipped them. Claude was many things, but _irresponsible_ didn’t seem like one of them.

A familiar presence hovered behind her and Demetria glanced back toward Dedue curiously. Belatedly, she realized that she’d forgotten to ask him if _he_ had any plans to meet anyone - she didn’t want to take up his valuable time if he would rather be with someone else. A small surge of guilt flushed through her but Dedue dispelled that quickly with a small smile.

“You should go,” he said, his voice quiet.

Demetria stole a glance to the professor, but she was organizing her things, heedless of their interaction nearby.

“What do you mean?” Her voice was innocent, but something familiar balled in the pit of her stomach as Dedue shook his head, giving her an _I know you better than that_ sort of look.

“To the Goddess Tower.”

“The - “ her cheeks reddened and Demetria turned quickly back to her bookbag, shoving a sheath of paper too harshly inside and crinkling the corners. “- why would I do that?”

“Because,” Dedue reasoned with all the patience of a saint, “Claudette is waiting for you.”

Demi stood up very rigidly in that moment, her shoulders straight with surprise, her eyes wide.

“That…”

She swallowed hard, thinking through Dedue’s words. Claude - _waiting_ for her? Sure, she’d said that she was waiting for _someone_ yesterday, but _her_? There was no way. The two of them shared a friendly rivalry, a light friendship, but there was nothing that suggested that she might - that she thought -

“-that’s ridiculous. She was probably talking about…” She flailed mentally, grasping at the first name that came to mind, “- Hubert. Or Marianne.”

Dedue reached down to pick up the quill that she’d dropped to the floor in her haste, handing it dutifully back to her.

“With all due respect, your highness, you were looking away from her when you complimented her yesterday. You did not see her face.”

Her mouth was suddenly dry.

“And what does that have to do with…”

“I saw the way she looked at you,” Dedue finally told her, his voice solemn, not a trace of joking or irony, “I see the way you look at her.”

There was a long silence that stretched out between them, in which Demetria’s heart felt like it was both rising into the sky and sinking down into the ground. The rush of exaltation paired with dread and anxiety was almost too much to bear, and her fingers closed tight into fists as she considered - just _allowed_ herself to think about… about a world in which Dedue’s hunch was true.

About Claude waiting for her, and Demi going up to meet her. About whispering to her what she felt when she looked at her, about tangling her fingers in her hair. About giving her one of her blue ribbons for Claude to wear around her wrist.

She had forced it down. Gone on with her life and her duties. But then just this, the first thought of Claude leaning into her was like a crack in a dam: affection trickled through it like light, and before she could fully comprehend what was happening, she felt close to bursting with a wave of repressed emotion and a desire that she had never been allowed to admit.

Demetria clenched her jaw hard. Her fists, she realized, were shaking. The professor at the front of the room was watching now, though trying to appear busy as she cleaned the already-clean chalkboard.

“You should go,” Dedue repeated softly and it was all Demi could do to nod at his words, agreeing even if just the simple motion made her heart waver.

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She closed it, licked her lips, and tried again.

“...what about you?” she finally asked, her voice tense and creaky. “I don’t want to leave you alone. We may not be romantic, but I am devoted to you, Dedue, and I -”

“Ashe and I have been romantically involved for several months,” Dedue told her flatly, amusement finally beginning to trickle into his tone. “I will be fine.”

“You _what_?”

She turned to him, incredulous, and Dedue shook his head, taking a step back and allowing her the space to leave her desk.

“This isn’t the time for that. Go.”

“I don’t -” she started, grasping for something, anything, “I don’t even know when she’ll be done with her lecture.”

The professor coughed delicately, setting down the eraser at the chalkboard. Both of them looked up toward her, and she smiled, moving to straighten some papers.

“...I may have arranged with Hanneman to let our classes out at the same time. Us old folks can date too, you know.”

“See?” Dedue asked her, a rhetorical question, both of them choosing to ignore the professor’s reference to her love life, “now is the time.”

Cheeks burning and head full of thoughts, Demetria left in a rush - not to get there _faster_ , mind, but because if she spent one more moment in that room with the two of them, then she might simply explode from embarrassment.

-

Claude was not there.

Demi tried not to feel disappointed, but she felt as if her heart, which had been expanding rapidly in her chest until it felt too big for her ribs to contain, had suddenly been compressed like a fist and was now crumpled in a small shape in the hollow of her lungs.

She peered across the rubble of the tower, trying to kindle a last string of hope, but it was pointless. Claude wasn’t there.

Demetria took a deep breath and wrenched herself back together, her fingers tight against her palms as she rebuilt the dam inside of her. She methodically filed away her affections - the rush she felt when Claude tucked her braids behind her ear, the way her heart surged like the arrow in Claude’s bow every time she drew it and struck her target - and closed them deep inside of her, where they could not break through her defenses again.

A joke, then. Claude did love to tease everyone around her. Worry knotted in the pit of Demi’s stomach as she considered that Claude may come here just to laugh at her - but no, Claude was a great many things, but _cruel_ was never one of them.

She turned to go then, when something caught her eye.

It was the first twinkle of a star above Garreg Mach, though the sun was still lazily in the sky, hovering low near the line of the horizon. It shone brightly, brighter than any other star - indeed, that was the only reason it was visible in the dying light of the sun.

Demetria turned, smoothing out her skirt as she strode toward the balcony in slow, even steps to look at it. She rested her hands along the railing, her mouth turned downward as a memory struck her.

Her father used to point to that star. _The Hunter’s Star,_ he’d tell her. The hunters who chased their prey in the south would use the star as a guide, even on the blackest of nights. If they lost their way, late in the night while trailing after the twists and turns of a stray deer, they could merely follow the path of that star and find themselves before the gates of Fhirdiad.

Fhirdiad seemed so far away just then. The memory of her father caused a chill to ripple through Demi’s skin, despite the otherwise-pleasant temperatures of the early evening. She tore her gaze away from it then, pushing the story from her mind - _I will honor you, I will, I will, I will_ \- and recollecting herself, when -

“...Princess?”

The voice was soft, clearly not meant to startle her, but Demetria startled all the same. Her fists closed around the stone of the balcony’s railing and it crumbled between her fingers, cracking and splitting off in large chunks into her palm.

She froze. The voice behind her was undeniably Claude’s, but now she could not turn to meet her with this - _rubble_ in her hands. Elation, embarrassment, and longing rushed through her like a runaway horse and her head sank lower, her teeth gritting as she forced her fingers to open, dropping the stone from her hands and watching with a wince as it bounced along the outer wall of the tower, making a terrible racket as it did so.

“- what was that?” Claude asked on a nervous laugh, bounding up beside her and looking over the edge. Demetria pulled her hands back sharply, rubbing her gloved palms against her skirt… a mistake, she soon realized, when the rock dust rubbed off on the black fabric.

“I, um…” She glanced to the railing, with two clearly-missing chunks from it. “...I kicked over a rock on accident.”

Claude looked down. The railing was obviously damaged, but it extended only a foot or so downward, where it met with a half-wall of a rampart: solid stone, with no space for a rock to have been kicked. Demi bit her lip.

“...I see.”

But Claude shook her head, dismissing it quickly and stepping closer to her, her face lit up in a brilliant smile that put the Hunter’s Star to shame.

“But you - you came! I didn’t know if you would.”

That feeling happened again. The feeling as if something inside of her was bursting, breaking, as if the walls she’d hurriedly built up were now tumbling down again and there was nothing but Claude’s lovely grin in its stead, the glint of her single earring, the scabs on her knees.

She still didn’t know what to say, but the _feeling_ begged that she say _something_ and so Demetria brushed aside the fringe of her bangs and nodded, trying to keep her chin up with the shreds of pride she still had left.

“I didn’t know you were inviting me,” she said honestly, shaking her head, “this was just a guess.”

“A guess?”

“...a hope,” Demi admitted, softer this time, her heart wavering. Claude saw this and smiled her devilish smile, reaching her hand out to touch at Demetria’s hair, tucking it behind her ear - though it was too short to stay put for long.

At the first touch of Claude’s fingers, Demetria felt electrified. Her hands were gentle, her fingertips softer than she had anticipated, and it warmed all the parts of her that were once chilled.

“I hoped too. But the crown princess of Faerghus,” Claude said, her voice soft with awe, “the only heir to the throne… you’re so strong and so brave, I didn’t think you’d notice someone like me.”

Demetria shook her head, careful not to dislodge Claude’s fingers, which had now drifted to her cheek and stilled there, pressed skin to skin. She stepped in closer, her voice more intimate now at the proximity.

“I already told you what I thought of someone like you,” she said, with more confidence than she felt, “and I don’t - I don’t want you to think of me as all of those things. Just Demi. Just… my name.”

Now it was Claude’s turn to blush, although it was hidden well in the blossoming sunset behind them. Demetria wanted to lift a hand and touch her face in turn, but covered in rock dust as they were, and still wearing the gloves, the gauntlets… it didn’t seem like it would carry the same weight.

So she kissed her instead.

Claude’s lips were pliable against her own, softer than anything she’d ever touched. Her wild hair brushed against Demetria’s cheek, and when her forearms slid over Demetria’s sturdy shoulders to pull her close, she couldn’t help but to set her hands on Claude’s lovely hips in turn, fingers lingering at her waist as they embraced in the low light.

When they parted, it was only to breathe, but Demi felt as if she hadn’t taken a breath in years. Claude’s face was so near her own, close enough so that Demetria could see every single one of her eyelashes.

“I hope that wasn’t… too forward of me,” she finally said, swallowing hard as she remembered herself.

Claude chuckled, letting her hands slide off of Demi’s shoulders with a quirk of her lips.

“Of course not. I liked it. I like _you_.”

And it should be… odd, like Claude was admitting a weakness, but it didn’t feel like that at all. It felt like they were both finally being honest, it felt like they were finally living in the truth of their reality: overwhelmed with affections, nursing a sapphic crush, and caught in the helpless delight of knowing its reciprocation.

Claude laughed again though, this time more like she was laughing at a particular funny joke as she looked down, gesturing to the smears of dust along her the black fabric at her waist from where Demetria had grabbed her.

“- I’m so sorry,” she started, but Claude waved her off, shaking her head with mirth.

“I’m going to enjoy thinking up an explanation for Hilda when she catches me like this,” she laughed, “she’s out with Marianne, but I’m _sure_ she’ll try to corner me before I can make it to my room.”

Demi flushed darker, looking over her gloved palms again and cursing her strength, but at least Claude seemed to be in good spirits about it - good enough that it continued to give her courage, to say -

“...maybe I’ll walk you back then. I can explain the whole thing.”

“Mm,” Claude teased, nodding her head as she turned for Demetria to follow her as she started to walk, “with or without the kissing?”

At that, Demi finally found herself laughing at the humor of it all, bashful but amused all the same as she reached for Claude’s hand, uncaring about the dirt or about who might see. 

The Hunter’s Star twinkled brightly above them.

“ _Definitely_ with.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you guys for reading! I definitely fell head over heels writing female Claude, I hope you guys enjoyed!
> 
> Happy Valentine's Day!


End file.
